An illuminating portrait of the 25-year-old woman who led England through religious and political crises with diplomacy,...
Ronald (The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire, 2007, etc.) imparts her vast understanding of the queen who tried to establish religious tolerance in her kingdom.
The 1558 Acts of Supremacy and Settlement established Elizabeth as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and revived the statutes that allowed both Protestant and Catholic communion. Ronald’s premise that Elizabeth never intended to marry illustrates how well the queen mastered political gaming; she ingeniously used her marriage card to play the European leaders against each other. Those countries also struggled with religious conflict. Catholic France’s attempts to deal with the Huguenots failed miserably, and Rome supported the Irish as they attempted to expel the English. The Spanish King Philip II suffered religious civil wars in the Netherlands, which not only ruined Spain’s commerce, but also forced them into bankruptcy multiple times. The Low Countries readily accepted the Catholic scholars who deserted Oxford for the safety of their Universities of Louvain and Douai. Elizabeth, never one to miss an opportunity, insisted on the expulsion of those scholars before trade could be resumed after their civil wars. While Elizabeth may have agreed to expel the Dutch rebels in England in return, when the time came, she conveniently forgot. The author calls Elizabeth a heretic due to Pope Pius V’s excommunication in 1570. However, since the members of the Church of England did not support the pope, neither she nor her supporters ever recognized the act.
An illuminating portrait of the 25-year-old woman who led England through religious and political crises with diplomacy, vision and pure force of will.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-64538-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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